Learn to draw by doing the exercises in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and continuing with the weekly challenges from the Everyday Matters group..The first few months of 2006 went okay but by mid year I had mostly stopped drawing.

Midway through the year I made a goal of working in my studio for 20 hours a week.I tracked 27 weeks and worked in my studio 490 hours for an average of 18 hours a week. If I subtract the 3 weeks I was in Maine, Kansas and Arizona I worked in my studio an average of 20.4 hours a week.

Art Business Goals:

Hold my solo show in February (postcard mailing, paperwork, the opening, etc). Completed.

Secure 2 new solo shows for 2007 and beyond. Probably completed – until I have contracts in hand I’m not talking details but both shows are scheduled for 2008.

Continue journaling my art in my blog. Yep. In addition I’ve been using my "real" sketch book more also.

Do a major redesign of my website so it has the same look and feel of my blog. Completed.

Order new business cards. Completed.

Create a real mailing list. Completed.

Inventory my artwork in a database vs. a spreadsheet. Oops – no.

Buy a new computer that has the capacity to run photoshop and better organize my online art business files. Didn’t buy the computer (reprioritized my budget, ie I didn’t have enough money) but I did a major reorg of my files.

Finish developing the lecture I’m working on “Working in a Series”. Determined in early 2006 this didn’t fit into my long term goals at this time.

Secure 1 venue for presenting the lecture. No longer a goal.

Limit my juried show entries to at most 8. Shows must 1) publish a hard copy catalog of the work 2) be a well know and respected national venue 3) be a fine craft, fiber or art show (vs just quilts) OR 4) be a local quilt only show that will result in quality local exposure. I entered 10 and got into 8 – list below.

In addition I was also invited to be in 2 group shows: the winter invitational at the Lux Center, which closed this weekend, and a second show coming up in 2007 that I’ll be posting about soon.

I also spent a considerable amount of time on both the artquiltreview blog and art & perception. Both of which I no longer am taking much of an active interest in. The artquiltreview blog doesn’t fit into my long term goals and art & perception didn’t turn out to be what I had hoped. But both were very good learning experiences. I will also post more about both of these at some point.

Overall I’m very happy with the year. I had my first solo show and I received very positive feedback. Over 11,000 people saw my work during that show.

In 2005 I quilted only 12 quilts so I doubled my production in 2006 with 25. I made major headway into establishing a second series of work this year also. While I still haven’t completely come to terms with this new work I’m very optimistic about future directions.

The business side of things were the main focus the first 3 months of 2006 and definitely took a back seat the rest of the year. I pulled together several portfolios and sent them out but I wasn’t as proactive as I could have been.

Although I didn’t follow up on the drawing in the second half of the year I did try my hand at both watercolor and oil painting.